


Sunrise

by JanuaryGrey (Jan3693)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Post-Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Repressed Feelings, Sharing a Bed, Sirius Black Free from Azkaban, Sirius Black Gets A Trial, Sirius moves in with Remus, reconnecting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-06-02 12:24:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19441408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jan3693/pseuds/JanuaryGrey
Summary: The trial is over and Remus is bringing Sirius home where they’ll both have to struggle with memories and feelings both old and new.





	Sunrise

There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope.  
—Bernard Williams

The _Daily Prophet_ called it the Trial of the Century.

After time had sapped some of the sting from the entire ordeal, Sirius would take a sardonic sort of pride in that designation. Just to be contrary, Remus would roll his eyes and cited other trials far more worthy of such a title, scoffing that the _Prophet_ ’s memory barely seemed to stretch back a fortnight, let alone a century.

A few jokes aside, they didn’t talk about it much. If he was being honest with himself, Remus didn’t even remember most of the trial. He could remember everything beforehand just fine, though the memories were eternally tainted with a greenish patina of the nausea Remus had been suffering for days. 

He remembered waiting anxiously by the visitor’s entrance to the Ministry for Arthur Weasley to arrive with Harry who, against both Sirius’s and Remus’s wishes, was going to testify at the trial. Sirius had wanted to keep Harry away from things, just in case it all went wrong. He didn’t want Harry to see him dragged back to Azkaban, and Remus agreed. They’d both been overruled by Harry himself though, in a display of stubbornness clearly inherited from both of his parents. 

Remus could remember taking his seat next to Harry, but everything blurred after a pair of Aurors led Sirius into the courtroom, and the chair in the middle of the floor had bound Sirius with heavy chains.

There were points that still stuck out, clear as crystal, like the plump, grandmotherly-looking witch who’d berated Barty Crouch about how twelve years was not a reasonable amount of time for anyone to wait for a trial. There was Arthur Weasley speaking, practically trembling with rage and disgust as he recounted how his family had taken in and cared for the rat that had proved to be Peter. How that rat had been in disturbingly close contact with all of his children, had even slept in their beds for years. It was tangential testimony at best, but it certainly cast Peter’s decision to spend years in hiding in a worse light.

He didn’t remember the content of Harry’s testimony, just the brave boy who spoke vehemently and whose hands shook when he sat back down next to Remus. 

The less said about his own testimony, the better. Remus came out of it battered and reviled by most of the Wizengamot, he was sure. The dark creature in Sirius Black’s bed. The werewolf professor. The man who’d kept important information from the Ministry. Dumbledore stepped in as a character witness and took full responsibility for Remus’s tenures at Hogwarts both as a student and as a professor. That probably helped. Remus’s memory went even fuzzier after that, consumed as he was with worry that he’d hurt Sirius’s case more than he’d helped it with either his testimony.

Then it was over. Remus didn’t even hear the verdict stated. He was bowled over by the reactions of the crowd though, a mix of outrage and victory that told him nothing until he fought to his feet in time to see the chains fall away from Sirius’s chair. 

Surprisingly, no one, not even the reporters tried to approach Sirius right away. That part Remus could remember clearly: Sirius standing alone, leaning heavily on the chair that had just released him, staring around with wide eyes like he didn’t trust what had happened was real. 

It was, of course, Harry who moved first. He pushed into the crowds, Remus and Arthur calling him back and trailing after him when Harry refused to listen to them. By the time Remus caught up to Harry, the boy and his godfather were hugging. Sirius’s eyes were squeezed shut, but tears were leaking out of them just the same. 

Remus and Arthur both held back, giving the two a minute to talk before Arthur had to take Harry back to the Burrow where he was staying until summer ended. “You’re welcome to come by,” Arthur said. “Both of you. I know you’ll want to see Harry again, and Molly could use with a few more souls to fatten up.”

Sirius held himself together admirably until Arthur and Harry had gone. Only then did he turn to Remus. His eyes were still overly bright with tears, and he all but collapsed forward into Remus’s arms. 

Remus wasn’t expecting the sudden, boneless weight, and even as light as Sirius still was, they both almost went tumbling to the stone floor. Luckily, Kingsley Shacklebolt was one of the Aurors who’d escorted Sirius into the courtroom and he’d remained lingering nearby. Kingsley managed to catch Remus by the collar of his robes and hauled both men back upright. Remus shot him a quick look of thanks even as his arms wrapped around Sirius, returning the rib-cracking hug Sirius was giving him, albeit somewhat more gently.

“Oh, Padfoot,” Remus said quietly. It was the only thing he could think to say, everything else was a tangle of thoughts and impulses and emotions that Remus couldn’t fit into words. He breathed in for what felt like the first time in a week, or a month, or possibly twelve years. 

Sirius smelled like sweat and cheap, astringent lemon soap, Remus’s weak, human nose was unable to pick out anything familiar, any of the old scents of dog and leather and bergamot and cigarettes that his memory associated with Sirius, but that didn’t matter. Not when he could feel the warmth of Sirius’s body beneath his hands and the brush of Sirius’s hair against his cheek.

It took Remus a moment to realize that Sirius was speaking. Whispering really, repeating a frantic mantra beneath his breath. _“Please be real, please be real, please, please, please be real.”_  
  
“Oh, Padfoot,” Remus repeated. “It’s real, I promise it’s all real.” 

He would have been content to stand tangled in Sirius’s stick-thin arms for hours, but he wanted Sirius to be able to look him in the eye, to see the truth behind the words. Remus gently stepped back, keeping his hands on Sirius’s shoulders. Sirius’s own hands flitted nervously through the empty space Remus had just vacated before they both flew up to latch onto Remus’s wrists. Once he’d reestablished that contact, Sirius finally met Remus’s eye.

“You’re free, Sirius,” Remus assured him. “You’re free, and I’m here, and you’re going to see Harry again very soon. It’s all real.” 

Sirius sagged forward again, and this time Remus was better prepared to catch him. Sirius didn’t resume his desperately tight bear hug. He didn’t seem to have the energy for it. Instead, his head rested against Remus’s shoulder and his fingers tugged lightly at the sleeves of Remus’s robes. “I want to go home, Moony,” he whispered. “Please take me home.”

There weren’t a lot of options when Sirius asked for home. The flat they’d shared before was long gone, as were most of the places Sirius had ever called home. The only place left was Remus’s own, half-derelict cottage in Yorkshire. It would have to do, he supposed.

“I have a cottage,” Remus told Sirius as he led them slowly toward the fireplaces on the eighth level. “It’s not big or even very nice, but you can stay with me…if you want.”

Sirius just nodded and clung tightly to Remus.

***

The second he stepped out of the fireplace, Remus felt a wave of embarrassment that made his cheeks burn. He hadn’t planned this, hadn’t thought things through, and now it was too late to take it back.

Right on cue, the flames flashed green, and Sirius fell out of the fireplace in a bony tangle of limbs and prison robes. He lay groaning on the ground as Remus forgot his shame and hurried to help Sirius. 

“Fuck…” Sirius muttered, rubbing at the shoulder he’d landed on as Remus brushed copious amounts of soot off him. “At least I wound up in the right place.” He looked past Remus, taking in the little cottage.

Not that there was much to see. It was an ancient, rundown little house barely held together with spells and Muggle gaffer tape. One room served as kitchen, sitting room, and bedroom with Remus’s bed shoved into the far corner. The kitchenette barely had room for a tea kettle on the stove. 

Remus watched Sirius as his eyes swept over everything. This cottage had cost almost every bit of Remus’s savings to purchase. It had been worth it though, to own the house and the land it was on, to know he wouldn’t have to face another eviction if yet another landlord found out about his condition. It hadn’t done anything to help with his employment problems, but it had been reassuring to know that he wouldn’t wind up homeless again. That had seemed like an accomplishment at the time. 

The entirety of the cottage could have fit into the sitting room of the flat Remus and Sirius had shared in London after graduating from Hogwarts. Sirius had paid for that place with the money Alphard had left him. Unemployed and lacking an inheritance of his own, Remus had never felt like that flat had been his, but it had always been nice. To have Sirius here, witnessing how little Remus could manage on his own…it was humiliating.

“I know it’s not much…” Remus said.

To his surprise, Sirius let out a sharp bark of laughter. 

“Was I really that much of a spoiled prat?” Sirius asked. 

Remus looked at him and found a strange mix of amusement, frustration, and uncertainty on Sirius’s face. He turned that expression on Remus, who realized Sirius was actually waiting for an answer to his question.

“Padfoot, you weren’t…”

Sirius took a few steps into the corner Remus had designated as his sitting room. It consisted of a single sagging, tatty armchair, a scuffed end table, and an overstuffed bookshelf that threatened to collapse if anyone breathed too close to it. Sirius ran a hand across the top of the chair.

“I was, wasn’t I?” He turned back to Remus. The look in his eyes was distant and unreadable. “It used to make you uncomfortable. I never paid enough attention to that…”

Remus shrugged and smiled, trying to bring Sirius back from wherever he seemed to retreat to when he made those pointed, almost uncanny observations. “You grew up with nice things, Sirius, and you had the money to buy nice things for yourself later on. It was just what you knew. I always knew you meant well. Besides, you didn’t always. Remember those plates with the kittens on them?”

Sirius frowned thoughtfully for a moment, actively searching for the memory of the horrendous plates he’d bought second-hand to try and appease Remus’s frugality, only to find out they were meant for hanging on the wall, not eating off of. It didn’t seem to spark a memory though, and panic flickered through Sirius’s eyes.

“Or the kitchen table we got from Andromeda?” Remus asked hastily, trying to find something Sirius might remember. “The walnut one her daughter had carved swear words into?”

Sirius’s eyes went wide and he surprised Remus by actually blushing a deep crimson. Oh hell. He’d obviously remembered what the two of them had done on that table once they’d brought it home. Flashes of Sirius naked and splayed across that tabletop played through Remus’s mind against his will.

He honestly hadn’t been thinking of _that_ part of the kitchen table saga when he’d brought it up. He hadn’t meant to remind Sirius of their past romantic relationship, just the past in general. 

Was it even possible to disentangle the two though? He and Sirius had been together from the end of their sixth year until a few months before _that_ Halloween. Their pasts were so closely, so intimately entwined.

Clearing his throat, Sirius turned away and continued his slow tour of the sitting area before crossing to the wobbly little table that served as Remus’s desk as well as where he took his meals. He turned away from that quickly, his cheeks still pink and moved on to the kitchenette. He reached out to touch everything he passed, as if to assure himself it was all real.

“Still, I was a spoiled prat, wasn’t I?” Sirius’s lips twitched and the light seemed to return to his grey eyes, so Remus let himself relax and smile in return.

“A little, yes.”

Sirius nodded, satisfied with the answer. He wandered toward the ajar door that led to the bathroom. He pushed the door open halfway to look inside. The toilet was cracked, as were the tiles, and both were so old that no amount of cleaning spells or elbow grease had been able to restore them to their original white. A plastic curtain hid the tiny shower stall from view, but couldn’t hide the eternal drip, drip, drip of the leaky head.

Returning the door to its barely ajar state, Sirius turned back toward Remus.

“You know,” he said. “The closest thing I had to furniture in Azkaban was a bucket.” 

A wry smile flickered across Sirius’s lips, but it faltered and fell when he saw the stricken look on Remus’s face.

“Oh shite!” He swore and crossed the small cottage to Remus. He raised a hand as if to touch the other man, but stopped himself halfway there and let the hand fall again. “I didn’t mean to…to upset you, Remus. I wasn’t thinking—I was just trying to say that I’m not like that anymore—like I was before, always needing expensive things—and you’re worried, but this is so much more than I’m used to. It’s nice, very nice…I mean…Shite. I’m rambling and just making things worse, aren’t I?”

Sirius sighed. He took a few steps back and looked away, reaching a hand up to pull through his long, tangled hair. 

“I—it’s all right,” Remus said tightly. “It’s not your fault…It’s just hard to think about…about you…in _there…_ ”

Sirius took another two steps away and sat down on the edge of Remus’s bed. Springs squealed beneath his weight. His fingers skimmed across the duvet, stopping to pick at a tear Remus had mended with off-colored thread. 

“It’s hard for me to think about it too…but at the same time, sometimes it’s all I can think about…I wish I could forget it, but I know I won’t…” Sirius said as he focused very intently on the blue duvet that had survived so many washes it was almost grey. “I’m…I’m going to be a disaster, Remus. I’ll understand if you don’t want me to stay for long.” 

Remus wanted to sweep across the room and wrap his arms around Sirius. He couldn’t though…they weren’t…He didn’t know what he was doing. He really hadn’t thought this through, inviting Sirius to stay with him. Seeing the other man perched on his bed—the _only_ bed in the cottage—drove that home. 

“You were always a bit of a disaster,” Remus said trying for a joke and only half landing it. “I never minded before, why should I now?”

“Because you loved me back then,” Sirius said flatly. Remus grimaced, then hastily tried to cover the gesture up, not that he need have bothered. Sirius was still staring at the loose thread on the duvet.

What could Remus possibly say to that? For some mad reason, the answer that jumped to mind was _“But I still love you.”_

 __He wished he could add _“as a friend,”_ or some other qualifier to that statement, but it would be a lie. Merlin, how twisted and pathetic was he? Still hopelessly in love with a man who’d left him when he believed Remus was a spy, and who Remus had abandoned in prison for twelve years. It was insane, and definitely not what Sirius needed right now when he was newly liberated and incredibly vulnerable.

“Why don’t you take a shower while I make some dinner?” Remus said instead.

Sirius nodded, clearly relieved with the change of topic.

He disappeared into the bathroom and Remus breathed a sigh of relief that instantly made him feel guilty. Sirius had done nothing wrong; Remus’s own insecurities and moral failings weren’t his fault. They never had been, much as he had sometimes foisted them on the other man in the past. 

Through the thin walls he heard the creak and shudder of the pipes followed closely by the hiss of water. Remus turned his attention to the cupboards. There wasn’t much in them, and Remus wasn’t much of a cook, but he had a tin of tomato sauce and a package of dried pasta. That would do for tonight.

Sirius was a long while in the bathroom, which suited Remus just fine since it saved him from having to make conversation while the pasta cooked. It was ready and perhaps even a bit overcooked by the time Sirius emerged wearing the same clean but wretched prison robes. He’d shaved and the shower seemed to have returned some of his energy. 

“Smells good,” Sirius said as Remus handed him a bowl of noodles and sauce. 

Instinct brought a self-depreciating comment to Remus’s lips, but he bit it back, not wanting Sirius to try and make him feel better with some horrific anecdote about the food in Azkaban. “Well, I always was a better cook than you were,” Remus said instead.

That made Sirius smile, so it felt like a success.

They ate mostly in silence, each of them hungry enough to ignore any of the meal’s shortcomings. Remus was happy to see Sirius had a healthy appetite. He’d been worried about that, about malnutrition and other health problems surely plaguing Sirius after years in Azkaban and then on the run. Tomorrow he’d have to find a way to convince Sirius he should see a healer or ten.

Remus cleared the bowls away when they were done, dropping them in the sink with a charm set to clean them. He stayed standing in front of the cabinets even after he was done, unsure of what to do next. It was getting late, perhaps he could suggest going to bed early. They’d both had a very long, exhausting day. Remus’s eyes skittered to the bed in its corner and winced. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea…

“Tea,” Remus said, his eyes landing on the kettle he’d moved to make way for the pasta pot. “Er, would you like some tea?” He turned to look at Sirius, who was still sitting at the wobbly little table, staring at his hands.

It took Sirius a moment to realize Remus was talking to him. He startled and blinked before giving Remus a small nod. 

Good. This was something Remus could do. It was something that could occupy his mind and his hands at least for a little while. He lit the stove again and let the water heat slowly, the Muggle way, to draw the process out a bit longer and let himself think. He found two clean mugs and a handful of tea leaves at the bottom of a tin. 

When it was done and the kettle was whistling, Sirius rose from the table and took one of the cups, curling his thin fingers around it and drawing the cup close to his chest, as though savoring the warmth.

“There’s no milk or honey,” Remus said, “but I have sugar, if you’d like.”

“Thanks, black is fine though,” Sirius said. His lips twitched, and Remus knew exactly what he was thinking. He let himself laugh.

 _“Yes I am, thank you,”_ had always been Sirius’s smug reply to similar phrases back at school. It had been a horrid old joke Sirius and James had worn to shreds and then some over the years, but thinking of it now, after so long, made it suddenly funny again.

Sirius seemed to know exactly what he was thinking, because he grinned as well.

“Second worst joke you ever made about your name,” Remus said with a shake of his head. 

“Never quite as bad as the ‘serious’ ones though, was it?” Sirius asked as he sat down across from Remus.

“No, but it’s part of the reason I always take sugar in my tea,” Remus said. He added a generous spoonful to his cup to illustrate the point.

“Don’t you dare blame your sweet tooth on me, Moony!” Sirius said with mock indignation.

They both laughed, and for just a moment everything between them melted away. Years, arguments, awkwardness, fears…all gone, and Remus was standing in front of his best friend, his first love, the man he thought he would spend the rest of his life with. 

It was only a moment though, and it broke like glass when they both blinked. 

They drank in silence after that, standing around the kitchenette. They moved back to the table after Remus refilled their cups, exhaustion was weighing on Sirius and his knees had started shaking. Once they were sitting, Sirius finally spoke again.

“Thank you,” he said softly, “for letting me stay. It’s…helpful, being around you. I feel like I can think clearer. It makes remembering things easier...” He suddenly jerked back from his raised teacup, looking stricken. “I don’t—I don’t want you to feel like you have to though…you don’t, Remus…You don’t owe me anything, and—”

Before he could think about it, Remus had reached a hand across the small table and laid it on top of Sirius’s own. “Padfoot, stop,” he insisted. “I offered. I want to help you…I want to…”

They both stared down at their hands as Remus trailed off, unsure of how he’d intended to finish his sentence.

“It’s…been a long day,” Sirius said quietly. He slid his hand out from beneath Remus’s.

“Yes,” Remus agreed, pulling his own hand off the table. “It has.” 

He looked up and around the cottage and was reminded again of just how small it was, and that there was only the one bed. He could try transfiguring the chair into a cot, but it already had so many mending charms layered on it that the old thing was likely to just collapse under the strain.

Sirius must have seen where he was very consciously _not_ looking, or he must have realized the same thing himself.

“I don’t mind sleeping on the floor,” he offered. 

“Absolutely not!” Remus said indignantly. The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. “You were just released from—” Remus caught himself before he could say prison or Azkaban, not wanting to give Sirius any reminders. Instead he gave Sirius a resolute glower. “You are not sleeping on the floor.” 

“Really,” Sirius said with a half shrug. “I don’t mind. It doesn’t make too much of a difference to me as Padfoot.”

“You were planning to sleep as a dog?” Remus asked.

“It’s easier that way,” Sirius said quietly. “I…I have nightmares when I try to sleep as a human. Apparently, I talk in my sleep too.” 

He said the last bit with a wry hint of a smile, but it didn’t chase away the shadows that had crept back into his eyes.

Remus swallowed. His throat suddenly felt dry despite the two cups of tea he’d just drank. “If you need to sleep as Padfoot, that’s fine. You’re not sleeping on the floor though.”

“Well, I’m not kicking you out of your own bed,” Sirius replied. He was staring down into his mug, and Remus was reminded that Sirius had gotten an Outstanding on his Divination O.W.L. He had to wonder if Sirius was reading his future in the tea leaves, and if so, what did he see? Remus looked down into his own cup and wished it had answers for him.

“I think we can share…if you’re planning on sleeping as Padfoot there should be enough room for us both in the bed,” Remus said slowly, each word spoken carefully as he watched Sirius’s reaction. There was no reaction though, only a slight jerk of a nod. 

Remus wished he could lighten the mood, maybe make a joke about the whole thing, something about storing or dog hair or anything, but his mind was drawing blanks, at least as far as jokes went. Instead, it was full of memories, visions of Sirius pressed against him in narrow Hogwarts beds or sprawled and tangled in the sheets of the bed in their flat. Sirius laughing, Sirius naked, Sirius moaning and gasping and coming.

“I’ll just use the loo, then I think I’m ready to pass out,” Sirius said, startling Remus back to the real world. The world where he wasn’t supposed to touch Sirius like that anymore. 

The chair scraped against the floorboards as Sirius stood and crossed to the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

Once Sirius was out of sight, Remus found he was able to move as well. He quickly took care of the teacups, adding them to the self-washing dishes in the sink. He could hear water running in the bathroom again as he quickly changed out of his robes and into pajamas. Grabbing another set of threadbare pajamas, Remus went and knocked on the bathroom door. 

“I thought you might want these,” he said when Sirius opened the bathroom door a thin crack. Holding up the flannel pajamas as an offering, he tried not to mind that Sirius was using his toothbrush. They’d sometimes done that back in the day, but well…they’d been swapping spit in all sorts of ways back then.

Sirius removed the toothbrush from his mouth and stared at the pajamas. “You don’t have to, Moony,” he said. “I won’t notice it once I change. The fur’s always the same.”

“True, I just thought you might want to get out of those.” Remus made the vaguest possible gesture toward the thin slice of Sirius’s striped prison robes that he could see through the door gap.

Sirius looked down at himself, at the too large robes. These ones were clean and new, given to him before the trial, but they were the same style as the rags he’d worn for years in Azkaban. “Thank you,” he said, opening the door a little wider to take the offered pajamas. 

He disappeared back into the bathroom for another few minutes while Remus waited, unsure if he should just get into bed or wait for Sirius. For something to do, he rechecked the locks and turned down the lights, though he left a candle burning in case Sirius needed to get up in the night. 

When Sirius came out of the bathroom, he was dressed in Remus’s spare set of pajamas, his prison robes nowhere to be seen. Remus barely had a chance to take in how baggy they seemed on his emaciated frame before Sirius changed shapes midstride and both clothes and skin vanished beneath shaggy black fur.

Padfoot leapt up onto the bed, which protested shrilly at the sudden weight. He curled into a tight, fluffy ball at the foot of the bed, his nose tucked beneath his tail. He wasn’t asleep though. Remus could feel his eyes, the same grey as they were when he was human, watching as he climbed into bed and pulled the duvet up around his shoulders.

“Goodnight, Sirius,” Remus said quietly.

The faint thump of a tail wagging against the bed was his only reply.

***

It was still dark outside when the bedsprings groaned, pulling Remus out of incomprehensible dreams. He must have muttered something, because a hand reached up to touch the side of his face. A calloused thumb brushed gently down his cheek.

“It’s all right, Moony,” Sirius’s whisper assured him. “Go back to sleep.”

Leaning into the warm hand still lingering against his skin, Remus obeyed.

***

Dawn had crept over the horizon the next time Remus woke. Pale light spilling through the thin curtains, and Sirius was nowhere in sight.

Remus sat up quickly, ignoring the morning twinges of muscles that never entirely stopped aching. It only took one quick look for him to see that Sirius wasn’t in the small main room of the cottage at all. He stood and crossed to the open bathroom door. Finding that empty as well, Remus felt a lump rise in his stomach.

Remus could recall a drowsy memory of Sirius’s voice telling him to go back to sleep, the touch of his hand against Remus’s face. Sirius wouldn’t have just left, would he? 

He grabbed a shabby dressing gown off a hook on the back of the bathroom door and hurried to the front door. It was unlocked, and when Remus pulled it open he nearly stumbled over Sirius, who was sitting on the front step.

There was a blanket wrapped around his thin shoulders, and he smiled uncertainly up at Remus. 

“Good morning, Moony,” he said. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

Remus stepped outside and closed the door behind him before sitting down next to Sirius. It was still August, but there was a chill in the air, perhaps a sign of an early autumn coming their way.

“No, but I was a little worried when I woke up and you were gone.”

Sirius winced. “Sorry. I woke up a little before dawn and…well, I thought about making tea, but then I figured it would be too noisy, so I came out here to watch the sun rise.”

A cool morning breeze ruffled Sirius’s black hair. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a few seconds before opening them again and exhaling. He seemed more relaxed than the day before, Remus noticed.

“It’s nice here,” Sirius said, gesturing with a hand to take in the unkempt garden and the trees beyond it. “Open, pretty…quiet. I like it.”

“I do too,” Remus said. The cottage was far from perfect, but he had never had cause to complain about the isolated surroundings. 

“Do you change out there?” Sirius asked, nodding toward the thick copse of trees near the cottage.

“No,” Remus said. “There’s a root cellar below the cottage—the trap door’s under the rug. I spend the full moons down there. My closest neighbors are a ways off, but still…It wouldn’t be safe.”

Sirius frowned, but he nodded. “I’ll be here the next time,” he said resolutely.

A part of Remus wanted to refuse. It had been years since he’d had anyone there to transform with him. What if something had changed? What if Moony tried to hurt Padfoot? It had never happened before, but that had been so long ago. The rest of him wanted to breathe a sigh of relief that he wouldn’t be alone. That, maybe, he wouldn’t hurt himself so badly if Padfoot was there again.

It was, Remus decided, a conversation for another day. They had two weeks before the next full moon, plenty of time to figure things out.

“I went to the Shack, you know,” Sirius said, pulling Remus out of his head.

“What? When?” Remus asked.

“The first full moon of the school year—end of September.” Sirius worried his bottom lip between his teeth. Someone had fixed them while he was awaiting trial. Sirius’s teeth were no longer rotting and yellow but straight and strong and white. “I knew I couldn’t let you see me as a human. I knew…knew you’d hate me. I figured you would either turn me in, or curse me yourself if I tried to talk to you.”

Remus swallowed and looked away. He couldn’t deny it. Before he’d seen Peter’s name on the map he would have turned Sirius over to the dementors. It would have nearly killed him to do it, even when he’d fully believed Sirius was guilty, but he would have done it, convinced as he was it would keep Harry and others safe. 

He jumped when Sirius laid a hand on his knee. 

“Don’t go feeling guilty, Remus. We’ve talked about this. Like I said, I knew I couldn’t approach human you, but I thought I could at least see Moony, that maybe I could make the night easier for you…like we all used to do. I went to the Shack and hid as Padfoot and waited. You never came though. I couldn’t figure it out…”

“I spent the night in my quarters. There’s a potion,” Remus said. “Wolfsbane—it’s relatively new.”

“You mentioned it, that night in the Shack with Peter and Harry…said it let you keep your mind?”

Remus nodded, and a genuine smile broke over Sirius’s face. The hand on Remus’s knee tightened.

“That’s…that’s _wonderful_ ,” Sirius said.

Disappointment made Remus’s heart sink. “It wasn’t perfect,” he said. “The transformations were still difficult, and the potion itself had some side effects…but, yes, it was wonderful…”

“ _Was?_ ” Sirius said sharply. His hand pulled away from Remus’s knee. “You’re not taking it anymore? Why?”

Remus shrugged. “It’s a very complicated potion, far beyond my ability to brew…and the ingredients are expensive. While I was teaching, Dumbledore had Snape make it for me every month. Without the job…” He shrugged again, trying to play it off when he saw the horrified look on Sirius’s face. “It’ll be all right, Sirius. I’ve survived this long without it.”

This time it was Remus’s hand Sirius grabbed. Their fingers interlaced as Sirius grasped almost painfully tight.

“That’s not right, Moony!” He said, quiet intensity in his voice. “I—we’ll figure something out. I promise…”

“You don’t have to worry about it, Sirius.”

Grey eyes caught his own. Sirius’s face was full of questions and apprehension, but something old and achingly familiar as well.

“What if…what if I want to worry about it?” He asked, so quiet and hesitant Remus almost missed the words.

“I…” Remus swallowed and looked down at their clasped hands, only then realizing that he was squeezing back.

Sirius sighed. 

“We’re going to have to talk about…about all of this.” Sirius waved his free hand in front of them, seeming to indicate everything around them.

“Yes,” Remus said.

“I don’t really want to,” Sirius said. “I just want…”

And Remus knew exactly what he wanted, impossible as it seemed. His heart seemed to skip a beat in his chest, but he smothered the idiotic grin that wanted to leap onto his face. Even if they both wanted the same thing, it wouldn’t do to go barreling into things. They were different people now, halfway to strangers really. 

“I know, Padfoot. I want that too,” Remus said, squeezing Sirius’s fingers lightly. “It’s not that simple though.”

Sirius nodded. He turned to look back out at the sun still slowly rising above the untilled fields.

“No, it really isn’t,” Sirius said. 

“Slow,” Remus said with a nod. “We need to take things slow.”

A smile twitched at the corner of Sirius’s mouth, sly and spiced with a hint of his old charm. “In that case, I’d like to take you on a date, Mr. Moony. Perhaps we could get coffee?”

In a move that was patently unfair, Sirius raised their intertwined hands and pressed a light kiss to the back of Remus’s hand. It took everything Remus had not to pull Sirius into his arms and make a terrible, wonderful mistake then and there.

Instead, Remus nodded. “Coffee sounds good.”


End file.
